


Stocks

by TunaFax



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series, Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: M/M, Mildly Offensive, in which seto kaiba is nothing less than himself
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 20:12:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9012592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TunaFax/pseuds/TunaFax
Summary: Seto Kaiba made it through three miserable years of high school without letting Not-Yugi Motou's naked shoulders distract him from his pursuit of the highest level in Candy Crush. SS gift for RainstormColors. <3 Updates every day until Christmas!





	1. Corporate Merger

 

1.

When the girl loser goes away for a week to do what Kaiba overhears is "dancing," he assumes it's around a pole.

But his phone whistles in class a day later, and it's a passport alert, and she's in Seoul, and this explains why the dog isn't asking him to break a twenty into singles.

Yugi shoots Kaiba's phone a concerned look.

He's his sickly-sweet self, shy and faintly worried about people who want nothing to do with him, and Kaiba has to bite down a grunt and make a show of sliding his phone into his pocket so that Ms. Chono can make a show of pretending not to notice it.

Yugi must've picked up on this ridiculously obvious arrangement by now.

Everyone else has - and Yugi is considerably smarter than every single one of these losers, but school district lines have been unkind to him.

But then again, no one in this school is kind.

"Motou!" Chono snaps, and Yugi tares his eyes away from Kaiba and snaps at attention, his back so straight that for a moment Kaiba thinks Chono triggered another episode and Yugi is about to whip out his duel-disk and challenge a  professional educator to card games in the middle of class since that's how he seems to think the world works.

Not that Kaiba disagrees.

But no.

There's a tremor in Yugi's knuckles, and he bites dead skin off his lips as if he's guilty of something despicable.

"Does my class bore you, Motou?" Chono coos, her voice laced with hurt. "Ah, no, I understand why you won't pay attention, now that you're standing and I can see you behind Katsuya. Can you see the board now?"

They're red and glossy now, Yugi's lips.

The back row sniggers.

The dog looks like he is about to whip out his fists and challenge a processional educator to a fistfight in the middle of class since that's how Katsuya thinks the world works.

Which is not entirely wrong, either.

"I think it's in the best interest of your education that you stand so you can see better," she smiles, all sunflowers and honey, "don't you?"

"N-no-"

"No? There are only so many ways I can accommodate you, Motou, unless you didn't hear me say it's for your education? Oh dear, hearing too..? Why don't you sit up front, then."

He would look like this, when Kaiba's Blue Eyes would wipe the last of his pathetic lifepoints, except... more of _this_ , like a king deposed and a celebrity shunned and a man humiliated before millions.

Yugi gingerly collects his things and brings them to the only empty seat in the front row, between two massive bullies, though Kaiba supposes there is no seat in this class that isn't next to a bully three times Yugi's size.

This place really is the worst, and Kaiba chose it for this exact reason. It's amazing what this school would let him get away with in exchange for some Botox and a few misused donations. Just two years ago, he brought bodyguards in children's uniforms and nearly murdered another student for a trading card. Which, in hindsight, is about as bad of a decision as his fashion choices at the time.

It's a good thing Kaiba doesn't dwell on the past, else the purge he wrought onto that unfortunate hair color and all records of it would've been for nought.

"No, no," Chono shakes her head at Yugi who is contemplating if his natural instinct to run away would apply in this situation. "That's no good, Motou. Sit at the teacher's desk, it's much closer, don't you think?"

Humiliation is a good look for Yugi. An angry flush across his cheeks is even better.

And, if Yugi chose this particular moment to violate the dresscode with his obscene shoulders he likes to expose to mess with Kaiba's game strategy, well, he wouldn't mind that.

...Kaiba takes his phone out again and habitually refreshes World DM rankings. His teeth grind and he feels a migraine coming on when he sees that he is, in fact, still ranked #2.

Damn.

All the way from the teacher's desk, Yugi sneaks his phone another concerned look.

 

2.

So the girl is gone, and there is a calculus exam on Friday.

Kaiba sips his coffee and runs his multibillion-dollar company from his phone between rounds of Candy Crush during lunch break at his high school where things like math are a catastrophe, and the girl is gone, and there is a calculus exam on Friday.  

Kaiba has an alert set up for their grades, too.

They are so fucked, and they don't even know it.

But his stocks are doing well.

Virtual Reality industry is blooming.

And KaibaLand is still being built according to its usual vague and confusing timeline.

Kaiba's got two minutes left until his next life, because despite what everyone thinks, starving on the streets between orphanages and telling his little brother he should have the last crackers - no, really, he's not even hungry - leaves  a bit of a lasting impression. Money is for important things like Kaiba Corp and KaibaLand and Seto Kaiba, or completely frivolous things like sports cars, or the bare essentials like the Blue Eyes White Jet.

Money is not for Candy Crush lives, big brother, this is getting out of hand, please stop, we're all getting concerned.

So Kaiba suffers the remaining one minute and forty one seconds for Mokuba, and listens.

"Don't worry guys, Yug got this."

Yugi is left in charge of math as the most competent member of the loser squad, so they all stay inside for lunch instead of practicing Satanism on the roof. It really depends on the day of the week for them.

Yugi is staring at the textbook like it kidnapped his friends, or stole their souls, or turned them to stone (again, day of the week type of deal), and he isn't exactly the avatar of optimism right now.

But he huffs, and the single curl on his forehead becomes airborne - and maybe his split personality can save him - but no, the curl lands back and stabs him in the eye.

Katsuya is vocal about his plans for remedial school.

Kaiba restarts the level.

They try for a time equivalent of one Candy Crush life,  with bright ideas like "this curve looks like a dick," and Yugi is getting shiftier by the minute about his discreet little stares he sends Kaiba's way. They're gauging stares, good-natured and subtle things only Yugi sends him right before the world folds into a neat box where Kaiba has a name for everything he feels, and there's nothing but the two of them, and their decks, and their minds, and peppermint tang of their rivalry, and when Kaiba loses and shakes Yugi's dainty hand only the smell of his sweat and mint on his breath stops him from trying to crush it.  

But this isn't a "did you get another Blue Eyes, please no" kind of stare.

It's the kind of stare that's looking for math help.

No.

Kaiba can't think of a single instance where the curve would look like a penis in the problems from this textbook which he solved two summers ago two years in advance in his spare time in case he would be too busy to do it before graduation.

No, he is too busy to help them now. Or ever.  

Kaiba fishes the depths of his pockets for headphones and plugs them in before Yugi has a chance to get up and ask.

 

3.

Kaiba's phone rings, but he knows it will before it does because Yugi's twitter is his homepage and Yugi's facebook is his first bookmark. And so it naturally follows that he hacked into Yugi's phone ages ago. And his email. And the security cameras in the game shop.

He also owns the ice-cream truck that parks across the street from Yugi's bedroom every night.

There is ice-cream in it.

Kaiba picks up after a respectful third ring.

"What," he says.

"Hey, Kaiba-kun!" There's a pause, as if Yugi's waiting for Kaiba to say something. When nothing comes, his voice wavers. "Um, so. I was wondering, since you're stalking my friends, do you happen to know where Tristan is? He's got my math homework but he's not picking up his phone and I'm worried."

"I couldn't care less about your loser friend. The government isn't spying on you, Yugi, get over yourself," Kaiba snaps and pulls up the GPS tracker he has on Honda's phone.

Honda is both at home and without any calls from Yugi.

A ploy? Perhaps. But if Yugi suspects Kaiba is tracking him then he also knows Kaiba will deny it, and if he knows that Kaiba knows that he knows than he wouldn't say what he said, and if he doesn't know then he will know that Kaiba knows if he sees that Honda never got any calls, and if he knows that-

God damn it, this isn't a duel!

"Oh," Yugi says, a bit put off, but when he speaks again he sounds rehearsed. "Wait," there's a random mashing of fingers against the screen, entirely off-key for it to be any real notification, "Tristan just texted me."

One look at the tracker, and 'Tristan' definitely did not just text him.

"He says he's sick and can't come. But, um. I really need to figure out math? So I was wondering-"

"Google the answers," Kaiba says and imagines Yugi wince an indignant wince of a valiant champion of academic integrity.

"How will that help?" Yugi says stiffly but doesn't preach when he's begging. "There's an exam and, well, honestly, we could all use a bit of help, but Jou will just make you angry before we get anything done, so I was thinking maybe you can help me and then I could-"

"I'm busy," Kaiba snaps and almost hangs up.

"Wait! Don't hang up! Um. I wouldn't ask if I thought you were busy, but you were playing on your phone at school and you don't do that unless everything is going well with the company - which is really great! I'm so happy for you! But... I don't know how else to ask. Please help?"

"Don't you have a mental disorder for this exact purpose?" Kaiba grits.

There is a pause on the other end.

"I asked him. He complained that the graphs aren't triangular."

When Yugi bows his way into Kaiba's house half an hour later, wheeling his dirty bike across polished marble, he further elaborates that the 'spirit' suggested that the answer must be always be three, seven, or the surface area of a pyramid.

It isn't often that Kaiba hears about _him_ from Yugi. He just sort of shows up - and then Kaiba pretends he doesn't - and that Yugi is a singular being with a PhD in drama camp.

It'd an unspoken rule. It's a taboo he had a fair hand in orchestrating and regretted the moment he realized how much he craves scraps of information and little pinholes into Yugi's insanity.

A better man would've been concerned for Yugi's wellbeing, a smarter man would've been worried about his own safety - there is, after all, an undiagnosed and vaguely homicidal tiny man in Kaiba's house who should probably be on all sorts of medication - but Kaiba is a better and a smarter man than literally anyone he'd ever met so he figures he can do whatever the hell he wants and no one is in a position to tell him any better.

Right now, for example, he wants to get Yugi the hell out of his house as soon as possible, and to take his insanity out of Kaiba's hungry reach before his sticky fingers get the better of him and he asks after what is nothing more tangible than an imaginary friend.  

"He's doing fine," Yugi beams and trots after Kaiba into the staff kitchen. "A bit down lately, but he's fine."

He addresses a high stool far more gracefully than he would've a year ago, and it's subtle things like this that remind Kaiba that Yugi too is coming into his own, something life had forced on Kaiba years ahead of them, all of them, and they are nothing at all like Kaiba, and teaching even one of them trivial things like math is unbecoming.

Still, the losers persist.

"I didn't ask."

"Jou's doing fine, too," Yugi dumps his backpack out on the granite.

"Didn't ask, and," Kaiba adds as an afterthought, leaning against cabinet and watching Yugi uncrumple crumpled notes, "he'll get the bill in the mail, for damaging KaibaCorp assets."

There is no damage. As far as Kaiba knows, Katsuya's been respecting the temporary restraining order that's about to get tossed any day now because _'his existence drives down my stock prices'_ is not a valid reason to grant a permanent one.

But Yugi isn't bluffing him down across a duelling arena, and at times he's not he's about as subtle as a pink diary. There is no damage Kaiba _knows about_.

Yet.

There's a caffeine spasm in his left eye.

Yugi scratches the back of his head.

"So. Um. Math?"

"You brought your deck," Kaiba nods his chin at Yugi's hip where, beneath a stripe of delicate skin, his deck glistens.

"I'm weak," Yugi flusters, "and I figured you guys would get along better if I brought cards. He doesn't... do well without cards. But at least you two have that in common, cards I mean, um, so... I'll just... be over there."

And then he narrows his eyes before Kaiba has a chance to tell him _fuck no_ , pushes his fringe back, and at once he's the other one, the parasite.

"Kaiba," the asshole says and adjusts his posture to pretend he didn't almost fall out of the chair. "Yo."

He is abnormally awkward about his transition this time around, and Kaiba could swear he hears him cuss Yugi under his breath. Yugi's much softer in comparison, but it's apples to grapes from a grapple tree, and he forgets sometimes that Yugi is an asshole in his own right.

"Why are you here," Kaiba grits his teeth. "Did calculus threaten the world or something? Go duel it somewhere else."

"My point exactly," he huffs and folds his arms. He's staring at something at his side, not at Kaiba, and whatever he sees there is something cheeky and trying because he ends up rolling his eyes at it.

"Do you even need help."

"Mn," he idles and inspects his nails. "Perhaps. Anzu said she'll help us over the internet. I'd risk a lower grade, if it was my decision."

"Then what the hell is this."

"A setup," not-Yugi drones lazily and clicks his tongue, "I should think. Partner had one of his ideas again."

They stare at each other for a tense moment, and Kaiba considers calling security, and the jackass considers slipping him some LSD for his smoke-and-mirror mind-fuckery.

"Wanna play cards?"

"I don't know, do I?" Kaiba snaps and starts for the entrance hall that can perhaps fit a half-sized holo-field. It's raining outside, and the nearest duelling room is deeper in the house than Kaiba cares to have him.

"Kitchen's fine."

"All those holo developers," Kaiba hisses, "did not die on the cross for you to play cards _on a table_."

The PR for that one was a nightmare, he recalls and pushes through kitchen doors, and he doesn't think about it again until Dark Magician Girl boops his Blue Eyes on the nose and takes his single remaining lifepoint.

"This prototype is pretty cool," the jackass gloats after he'd collected his cards and has a chance to appreciate the new duelling system. The field brackets fly back and clip under the deck slot, and Kaiba watches him brace himself for the usual impact and then sway off-balance when the returning brackets don't punch. "Oh, that's new."

It's rated G, and Kaiba convinced the board that it's to expand the market to pre-teens, and not at all because the internet thinks Seto Kaiba likes to punch small children in the deck.

He doesn't tell his triumphant opponent to submit a survey since he's essentially three feet tall and like ten, and fits right into the target market.

"And the hologram rigs are cool, even if you made everything blue. Well done."

"Do not," Kaiba squeezes his good-game hand and doesn't bother to hide his resentment, "patronize my work. If you wanted to change the development color, you should've bet for it."

"I'm not patronizing you, I'm congratulating your new thing," he huffs peppermint and his hand lingers between Kaiba's fingers. "And I don't like betting. I mean I do, when it's appropriate. But some people play games for fun, Kaiba. You should try it sometime."

"You even suck at gossip," Kaiba says because that's what the school whispers behind his back when he's there to hear it.

"That's old gossip. New gossip is that you need to get laid. But it's school, so no one important caught wind of it, and I won't repeat it."

"Whatever. Best of three?"

The 'spirit' makes a face. "Math. Not that I mind you explaining the mystery of what 'Monster Reborn' does for ten minutes, but I have to learn _something_ today."

He looks frustrated, more with himself than with Kaiba, and Kaiba grits his teeth again. For a time, their duels were fury against zeal, but Kaiba hardly ever sees as much as a spark of that old vicious fire anymore. It's a punch to the gut, to know that Kaiba is a disappointing partner to a man who tore him down from his throne and started a new chapter in his life. It's a punch when they shake for a game well played, and it's toothache every time someone as much as breathes Yugi's name in his presence.

The dental bills alone are outrageous, and sometimes Kaiba considers charging them to the Motou residence.

By the time he convinces 'the spirit of a pyramid' that the graphs do not behave like pyramids, they've had two more card matches and a bonus screaming match about destiny, and how they managed to derive that one from calculus is still beyond Kaiba.

"So. It doesn't look like Partner's coming back anytime soon," not-Yugi says causally, but his body language is anything but. It's in the little things. His pencil keeps snapping, his lead rolls away, he can't find the right notes. He is in no way fumbling, graceful about the stationary as if it's the school supplies that are in the wrong, but he's jumpier and vary, and Kaiba can't think of anything that would set him off except himself.

"Well," Kaiba says and mentally berates himself for going along with this nonsense, "where is he?"

"In his Soul Room, playing Nintendo."

...Kaiba sorely regrets ever going after the fourth Blue Eyes card and subsequently meeting this guy as punishment for his shameful actions.  

"I know, right," the 'spirit' rolls his eyes, oblivious to Kaiba's eternal struggle. "Lame. He's so nerdy, can you believe him? Anyway, we're alone," which is alien to him, and the news are alien to Kaiba because it never once crossed his mind that they weren't. "And I'm thinking he's meddling again, so heads up."

"Meddling," Kaiba repeats, his voice flat.

He eyes Yugi's crumpled math notes. If one of them is a love note, then it's time to expand KaibaCorp to the moon.

"I checked those," Yugi (or rather, Yugi's mental illness) says and shoots the papers a meaningful stare, and he's in Kiaba's head again, how the fuck does he do that. "Thank the Gods, no. But I demand a gentleman's agreement, Kaiba."

"Never happened," Kaiba agrees gladly, and notices that Yugi's bare shoulders have a pleasant curve to them underneath the drapery of his school jacket.

God damn it.

He pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to banish the thought. No wonder this guy couldn't handle a pencil.

"There you go," the jackass sounds pleased and distraught at the same time. "Misery loves company, Kaiba."

And then his jackass eyes go wide and he falters.

"Not that I'm shutting you down!" he adds quickly. "Or trying to be insensitive. Sorry. Wanna play cards?"

Shutting him down - since when was this - _what_.

"Why is this happening," Kaiba grits from behind his hand.

"Because Yugi thinks we could work, like togeth-"

"That was a rhetorical question! I'd like to see your god cards help you when I'm tossing you out if you ever finish that sentence!"

He's standing now, his fists clenched and his molars grinding, and he thinks this is it, this is the day Seto Kaiba kills someone without cards over something that has nothing to do with cards. He won't, actually - he knows he won't. Yugi is just one sharply-budded flower in a vast bouquet of crazy, but he is Kaiba's precious rival and one of very few men whom Kaiba begrudgingly respects.  

But clock him in the jaw he just might. Over what, Kaiba isn't entirely sure, except he's furious over something which he prefers to keep buried, and so his next course of action is to clock the jackass in the jaw.

He doesn't. Yet.

"Wow," the said jackass folds his arms across his chest and adopts a sour face. "Now you're shutting me down. Rude."

He's bluffing. He has to be bluffing, else Kaiba has to reset to defaults and actually throw him out on the street for lack of better options.

He measures Kaiba with his narrow eyes. It takes him a while to swipe up Kaiba's looming body, toes to head, but when he finishes he's got his game face on.

"Sit," he demands.

"Get out."

"Hn," he grins, and there is a spark of malice in his eyes. "Rock paper scissors."

"What."

"Best of one. I win, you sit down. You win - I don't know, whatever you think is the equivalent."

Kiaba bets Yugi gets the hell out of his house and, of course, loses.

So he sits at the nearest stool and folds his arms, and not-Yugi starts for him in a determined stride, and then grabs at Kaiba's face, and then kisses him, and then gets clocked in the jaw for it.

"Well. Okay," the supposed pharaoh wipes his mouth, turns on his heel to shove his things into his backpack, and gets the hell out of Kaiba's house.

 


	2. Change Management

4.

Next morning, Yugi sports the bruise on his jaw like he sports his puzzle. It's a large and low-key ugly blemish against his skin. It looks out of place on him and does nothing to match his outfit.

Yugi doesn't tell the losers, but they know Yugi went to Kaiba's house last night, and so they sort of put two and two together and come up with five. The theory goes that Yugi was minding his own business (at Kaiba's house) when Kaiba broke in (into his own house) and demanded Yugi duels him, but Yugi didn't want to play cards (????????) and so Kaiba punched him the face and stole his lunch money.

Katsuya is the one to confront him during the first recess.

"And after that, I went to the SPCA and kicked the shit out of every puppy they had," Kaiba confirms and plugs his ears with headphones.

 Yugi, the softer one, avoids him with great dexterity, almost as hard as Kaiba is avoiding all of them, and really, Kaiba couldn't hope for better.

One more month. Thirty days, and he won't ever see any of them again, except as backdrop to his tournaments, the ones that cost KaibaCorp a fortune and hardly ever pay for themselves, and each time Kaiba hosts one he presents his investors with elaborate reports of publicity value, all documented and framed and false as all hell.

In truth, Seto Kaiba just wants to play cards as extravagantly as humanly possible and pay not a penny for it.

And not on the floor of the single-room handicap stall where all of this school's tournaments go down ever since Katsuya had managed to get cards banned.

Kaiba tries the door in faint hope that he can do his business in the school's most prime real estate, but it's locked and it's dirty urinals in the boys' bathroom for him, but at least there's no one there.

Yugi is polite enough to let him finish pissing before he corners him.

...though saying that isn't fair to corners. Kaiba could just sort of step over him and be on his way.

Instead, he washes his hands and lets Yugi answer a half-hearted "what do you want."

"Go out with me."

"Did you know," Kaiba shakes his hands dry and pries a jammed paper towel form the dispenser, "that, in addition being an excellent stimulant for mental development, cards can make a great shank?"

Yugi is not-Yugi again, cocky and relentless, but at least he keeps his jacket on and Kaiba isn't distracted by his obscene shoulders.

And to think he was thinking about spending fifty times more money suing the school for uninhabitable conditions than it would actually cost to fix the heating, just because he can.

 Not-Yugi, meanwhile, latches the door shut and leans against it. Folds his arms. Pretends to be the incarnation of patience, except he doesn't know that word even means, so he taps an irate rhythm against his belt and sifts through his words.

"You aren't the only one with pride, Kaiba. I won't ask again."

"Oh, good," Kaiba snipes and goes to the door rather than to him, the door which he happens to be blocking with his unimpressive body, so he  steps on his toes and squints to better see him all the way down there. "Had me worried."

"Ah. Sure. You think I'm fucking with you."

Kaiba snorts at that.

"Kaiba. You should know me better."

He does. And, Kaiba knows him to have a surprising degree of success when he tries to convince strangers on the street that he is an ancient spirit with a destiny to save the world with card games who haunts Yugi through a tacky gift-shop toy which he strung around his neck with a chain from the Dollar Store. So there is that fancy bit of precedent.

Kaiba does know him well.

That's the problem.

So he snorts again and considers dunking the ancient spirit with a destiny into a toilet. Yugi will find a way to overdose him on some illegal hallucinogen later, but it might as well be worth it.

Still. One well-deserved punch is one thing. At this rate, Kaiba might lose his temper and then lose him as a duelling partner altogether, and that sits with him about as well as Yugi fucking around like this, with no rhyme or reason.

Not-Yugi squints, harder than he squints during one of his episodes, and Kaiba wonders if he maybe just needs glasses.

"You know I kissed you yesterday, right? You don't really look like you even thought about it."

Not-Yugi looks like he thought about it. His guyliner is uneven and there is sleepless dust under his eyes, tell-tale signs of a bluff gone too far, except the only way he can salvage his pride now is to move forward.

"Whatever, sort your trust issues when I'm not essentially telling you that I'd like to tolerate your presence on more frequent basis," he looks decisively put off. "Go out with me, Kaiba. Yes or no."

"Fine."

"Fine- wait, fine?"

"Fine."

"Well," the 'spirit' bristles and pretends to lean against the door when in reality he's pressing himself into it. "Didn't expect you'd actually agree."

Kaiba's eyelid twitches, but the urge to punch him again has receded a bit, and he's left with rather filling sense of gloating, even if there's no one to witness his glorious victory in a room filled with toilets.

"So now what."

"Oh! Right, yes, of course," he stares up at Kaiba, and he's faintly awkward again, red-lipped and as embarrassed as he can stand to be, just short reverting back into Yugi. And then, to Kaiba's uttermost horror because _sense_ picks this exact moment to manifest, grins one of his heartening grins and says, "coffee after school?"

Kaiba doesn't tell him that he can't believe he's not fucking around, because he believes he's not.

Kaiba doesn't tell him he won't show.

Kaiba nods, escapes the bathroom, and plays Candy Crush in his lap for the rest of the day.

Holy shit, Yugi Motou's evil split personality kissed him yesterday, what the fuck.

 

5.

"I got you this black and bitter coffee and a plain piece of bread, to match your stunning personality."

The piece of bread is a bagel. Kaiba takes both and lets him into his house.

"You get one free pass, by the way," he adds and sips what smells like mint tea, "standing me up was it."

He changed out of his school uniform, but his hoodie is soaked through and there is no sign of his bike. The coffee and bread are dry and the wrapping is crisp, so care for his gift food was given umbrella priority.

He's serious, then.

He's serious, and Kaiba doesn't know what to do with that.

"You don't know what to do about me," the 'spirit' gets into his head again, and Kaiba would explode on him for it if it wasn't for his calming nonchalance.

"It's not every day that my rival's mental illness makes cow eyes at me," Kaiba tells him flatly.

Mental illness in question takes no offense.

"I always thought - about cow eyes - that one day you would get pissed enough about losing and kinda grab me or something. I thought it would be unavoidable, actually, that's why I thought about it in the first place. You're intense, what can I say?"

Kaiba leads the way with his back to him, because if he doesn't see him he won't have to deal with him. It's a short victory, and they face each other in the barren staff kitchen again.

"That probably came out really offensive. I know you're not like that," he frowns from behind his tea when Kaiba doesn't say anything. "My apologies."

It had crossed his mind, but not _like that._

He does, sometimes, think about having Yugi grabbed and whisked away to a mental institution.

Sometimes, he imagines lifting him in the air and shaking _him_ instead of shaking his victorious hand. He imagines punching him, driving him around and then smashing his side of the car into a pole, ejecting his friends from a plane.

But not - not grabbing him _like that._ He's about Mokuba's size, for fuck's sake, and Kaiba imagines it'd be nearly impossible to fend off an attack _like that_ when Yugi's only weapons are drugs and insanity. And, the thing is, Yugi isn't pathetic or somehow less of a man for it - which is balm to Kaiba's wounded pride - but it would be too low of a blow for them both if... Kaiba ever grabbed him... _like that,_ or to know that Yugi thought he might.  

Instead, he says "it's fine" and bites into his bagel.

"I could probably beat the shit out of you," not-Yugi furrows his brows like he's read Kaiba's mind again. "Partner likes to dress a certain way, so we decided safety first. Now I regret I said anything at all, perhaps you should say something, before all of this goes to shit again. I'm trying here."

His sweater is soaked through, and his hair is dripping from the points. He's as frustrated as he would be across an arena when he's starting down three dragon maws. It's usually a satisfying thing to see, and Kaiba has to remind himself that this isn't a card game; this, in this context, is bad.

It's bad because Kaiba's known that Yugi is serious about this... thing... for hours, and his usual answer to everything is "no" unless someone can convince him it's good for the stocks. This can go either way for the stocks, and Kaiba doesn't not want to not uninvite him.

"Ask me for a towel," Kaiba tells him when there is enough water on his countertop to darken the granite.

"Why?"

"Because I'm not about to offer you one," he bites and gets to his feet.

"Well done hosting," not-Yugi mutters. "May I please use a towel, Kaiba."

"Fine."

 "And a spare jacket?"

"Stay here."

But he follows him across the threshold that separates the service part of the mansion and the rest of the house, and he's deeper in Kaiba's home than he's ever been.

He isn't gaping, but white-marble-everything and clean angles of minimalist art themed 'blue' that Kaiba ordered in bulk fascinate him. He's graceful about it, and there's something faintly regal about the way he glides between Kaiba's designer furniture.

But, Kaiba supposes, that's what happens when you're convinced you're an ancient pharaoh.

"You have a very clean home," is his royal observation. Kaiba knows exactly what he means by it, so when not-Yugi adds, "do you actually live here?" he's not all that surprised.

 It's when generic art gets displaced by framed trading cards and very pricey oil-based Blue Eyes fanart that Kaiba makes him sit on a couch and wait.

"That's more like it," the 'spirit' says and outright judges one of the paintings. "Say, do you have one of these in your room, where's it's a picture of you riding the dragon?"

Seto Kaiba owns a Blue Eyes White Jet.

Of course he has a fucking picture of himself riding a dragon in his room.

He comes back with a towel he took from a guest bathroom and one of his own tracksuits, the tightest one he owns, but he already knows Yugi will be rolling the sleeves all the way up to the elbows.

Yugi, not-Yugi, Kaiba has no patience for this.

But then again, explaining to Yugi that there is only one of him is about as effective as explaining to Kaiba it's possible to duel without a holo-field. 

"Do you have a name?" he says and not-Yugi turns from messing with a statue (of a dragon, it's blue) to find Kaiba in the door frame with dry things.

"No," he rolls his eyes. "But if you ever listened to literally anything I say, ever,  you'd know that."

 He looks annoyed and keeps eyeing the towel like Kaiba means to flaunt it and then toss it through the window.

"What should I call you, then," Kaiba starts for him and unravels the blazer as a peace offering.

Not-Yugi is still sceptical.

"Your majesty will do," he snorts and makes no move to collect Kaiba's hospitality. He's still wearing his soaked sweater, and the sweater is the point of all of this, isn't it? If Kaiba gives him dry clothes, that's it, they're - what did Yugi call it - they're _'going out.'_

"No."

"Fine. I don't know. Dark Yugi? Nameless Pharaoh. Spirit of the Puzzle. Look," he sighs. "Yami is fine, just don't overdo it."

Right.

Kaiba hands over the towel and the blazer.

Not-Yugi takes them gingerly.

"Thanks," he says like he doesn't quite believe what he's holding.

Kaiba shrugs and idly watches him pull his sweater over his head, and - Yami - is wearing a black top underneath that, and for all Kaiba knows it's the only shirt he owns. The top, of course, rides up all the way to his ribs, and when he emerges from his sweatshirt, he is a mess of hair and red lips, and he's squinting through his fringe.

Worse, he notices Kaiba looking, so he throws his hair back and winks.

"Wanna play cards?" he grins and pulls his shirt down, except his shoulders are bare and Kaiba remembers that he's supposed to be distracted by them. "Loser doesn't punch me in the face."

"Loser," Kaiba accepts, "doesn't assault me."

Yugi's mental illness apologizes and says he shouldn't've been pushy about kissing, but Kaiba loses all the same. It's routine now, losing, and Yugi - Yami, whatever - approaches him and pats his arm like Kaiba's made of spikes, and doesn't bother offering a handshake.

"Maybe if we just play for fun," he says, and Kaiba nearly spits at him for his pity. "Your new system is really cool, though, I like how the G-rated graphics aren't like Toon World at all. I hate that card."

"Everyone hates that card."

But the jackass doesn't back away, and Kaiba remembers that they're 'going out' and not-Yugi is 'trying.'

"So," Yami lets his arm linger, "wanna just buy a bunch of starter packs and play with whatever we get?"

"Blind pick is not a valid tournament mode," Kaiba grits, and it's not like the cards are the problem.

"Not everything has to be in tournament mode."

"If it doesn't count, then it's not worth doing," he snipes and wonders if defeating not-quite-Yugi with a towel on his head on a  G-rated duelling prototype would count.

"Yeah, yeah."

His hair's dry by now, and so is his hoodie, courtesy of Kaiba's lengthy lecture about what a card called 'Negate Attack' does. But he still goes for Kaiba's blazer.

It's way too big for him. It's blue. It drops to his thighs, and he'll need about half a foot more in arm length to fill out the sleeves.

He doesn't zip it, so the collar slides down one of his bare shoulders, and blonde hairs spill over the curve of his neck.

"Just so we're clear," Yu-Yami says and plants his hands on his hips, "is any of this getting through?"

"What, that you're horny and desperate? Try the mutt. Tell him the fate of the world depends on it, he just might buy it."

Insulting him is probably a bad idea, but it isn't Kaiba's fault their relationship if built on mutual antagonism. If, for example, someone had only recognized the signs and gotten Yugi some help sooner, than this man wouldn't be slutting up Kaiba's living room on the count of not existing at all.

"You look fine," he says in the end when the 'spirit' begins to tap his foot and glower at Kaiba from beneath his fringe. "Look, _Yugi_. What's this about, really, so I can speed it the hell up and we can get on with our lives."

"I'm not Yu- _ugh_ ," he sets his jaw. "What life do you even _have_?"

They could fight some more, or he could smack a hand onto Yami's distracting bare shoulder.

That shuts him up, and he stares at Kaiba who's sort of holding him at arm's length and touching a bare patch of skin with his cold hands.

"Wow," Yami decides, "lewd. You're a regular pervert, Kaiba."

He shrugs Kaiba's hand and catches it in  his own like he's afraid Kaiba will lock his elbow and not let him come closer. He takes a step forward when he's sure he's not getting punched again, and he's in Kaiba's space, and he smells like sweet mint, and they're sort of holding hands.

"When it's a duel, I know exactly what to do. But when it's not a duel, I have no idea what to do. I figured you're in the same boat."

Kaiba has no idea what he's talking about, everything's a duel.

But, even on his tiptoes, not-Yugi can't reach him.

 So Kaiba tips his chin so he doesn't have to touch him too much, presses his mouth against his bruise, calls it good enough and tells him to get out of his house.

 

6.

It's too late to call night and too early to call morning, and Kaiba is still waiting for it to click.

Just to be sure, in case it doesn't click, he's got a ticket for the first flight out of the country on his bedside table. But Seto Kaiba doesn't run away from his problems - he blasts them with his Blue Eyes - and also that he has a private fleet, screw flying with peasants.

So the ticket isn't for him.

It's for Yugi.

There is a card-game crisis going down in the glorious territory of Nunavut that Yugi must check out; it's very Egyptian and might be related to his destiny, and now that they're _'going out'_ Kaiba is eager to help him with his quest.

It's early Friday, and their Calculus exam is in seven days, but anyone who thinks Yugi won't just blow his weekend playing cards all day has never met Yugi.

Kaiba doesn't even feel bad.

Sure, he might wake up in a hospital after a really bad LSD trip when the crazy thing he's 'going out' with  comes back and seeks vengeance, but it would be worth it just to get some time alone in this prolonged, suffocating relationship.

It still doesn't click.

It's been four hours, and it doesn't click, and Kaiba regrets being a competent CEO because he could really use a major crisis right about now.

Kaiba's sworn card game rival's split personality - Kaiba acknowledges the narrative should just end at that - has demanded an  arrangement to play cards with Kaiba more frequently.

This is agreeable.

Kaiba agrees with this.

It's a good arrangement.

But anything beyond that is nope.

 Kaiba knows he should, in theory, feel things other than concern for his stocks and irritation  that KaibaLand is taking too long to build, but he can't quantify Yugi, or Yami, or the fact that the skin of his face has made contact with the skin of Yugi's face.

Twice.

The skin of their faces touched two times, and Yami waddled off wearing Kaiba's track jacket.

Harlequin novel material right here. 

There's a call from Yugi's number the next morning right before school, and he chain-calls politely until Kaiba picks up.

It's Yugi, thank Money, and Yugi just wants Kaiba to know how happy he is for them.

"Give the phone to the other one," Kaiba demands, "I need to speak to him."

Yugi's balls drop mid-sentence, and this is officially the stupidest thing in which Seto Kaiba had the misfortune to partake.

"What's Nunavut?"

"Doesn't it sound Egyptian to you?" Kaiba checks.

"Sure, I guess," says an actual Egyptian pharaoh.

"Then it's definitely in Egypt. You should go."

Yami, bless his ancient Egyptian heart, actually collects the ticket from Kaiba's doorman, and goes to Nunavut instead of school.

Kaiba feels no guilt, just concern over stock prices, but he makes sure there's an extra bag checked in under Yugi's name filled with thermal socks and puffy jackets.

It buys him three days, and he blows them playing cards against AI.

By the end of third day, Seto Kaiba has yet to experience any feelings over his predicament, so he decides to go along with it for a bit longer.

 

7.

 

As soon as Yugi's plane lands and he can text, Kaiba knows he'll be tripping on mushrooms pretty soon, and, true to that, he wakes up wearing hospital scrubs in a private clinic with no recollection of how he got there.  

"What happened?" he demands from Mokuba whose bored face is the first thing he sees. His dotting little brother brought him his school uniform, which is still, unfortunately, a place he has to attend. Kaiba half-wishes Yugi's mushrooms took him out for longer.

"Yugi came over after he flew in from Canada. You guys played cards."

"What did he give me?!"

Mokuba shrugs.

"Your drug panel is clean. Again. Honestly, bro, I'm telling you, they're mini-strokes. Please take a vacation."

Kaiba's night at the hospital made the stock prices drop by one point. 

He confronts Yugi who's still jetlagged, with frostbite on his button nose and three Nunavut duelling trophies in his bag.

How does that even happen.

"You should donate to put some sofas in this bathroom so we can have these meetings in comfort," Yami-Yugi tells him as he's drying his hands, and Bakura agrees wholeheartedly from an adjacent stall.

Kaiba tells Bakura to use the urinal like a man and get lost.

"He's painting in there," Yami explains. "He's got gym. I might just join him next block, my toes still feel like they're falling off. Thank you for that."

"Stop," Kaiba seethes, "drugging me! You're damaging my stock prices!"

"Oh," says Bakura, "if you do stop, I'll buy whatever you have left over."

"A little shadow game never hurt anyone!"

And that's it, Kaiba is grabbing him, shoving him against a row of sinks and pressing the skins of their faces together.

Or maybe Yami grabs him, yanks him down, and kisses him.

Kaiba doesn't know.

Kaiba doesn't care.

Yami's lips are dry and flaky, nipped unkindly by the Canadian cold, and Kaiba's neck kind of hurts from leaning at an awkward angle, but this works - _they_ work. Yami's like thunder beneath Kaiba's fingertips, something grand and menacing packed into five feet of soft curves.

Touching cheeks that aren't quite Yami's is like asking for him to burst at his seams. What would happen to Yugi then, Kaiba doesn't know. Hell, Kaiba doesn't know what will happen to Kaiba, and it occurs to him in passing how unstable this thing is.

Sure, he duelled it, and antagonized it, and went to school with it, and came half-way around the world when it needed his help, but it was never like this - never _Kaiba's_ problem.

But when their lips come apart, and they're both far more embarrassed than when they came together. _It_ even blinks dumbly and flusters a bit.

It's Kaiba's problem now.

"Whatever," it - _he_ \- says and wipes his mouth.  

He's pissed. Kaiba's pissed, too, and maybe Yugi is pissed, except Yugi is _'playing_ _Nintendo in the soul room'_ which in psychiatrist language must mean _'suppressed as a core personality.'_

Kaiba frowns, catches his chin and tilts it at different angles.

Yugi's still damaged a bit: his bruise is yellow now, but his lips are dry and the very tip of his nose is nipped pink by arctic frost. That's the Yugi part, and what glares up at him through Yugi's eyes is definitely not Yugi.

Kaiba kind of wants to bend him over a sink, and there are just so many problems with that.

And then he blinks.

And Yami disappears.

Vanishes.

Into thin air.

Kaiba is bracketing an empty space with his arms, and Bakura is dumping dirty paint water into a sink.

"Oh," he says airily, "welcome back. You've been standing there for ten minutes, he left a while ago."

Kaiba grits his teeth so hard a filling chips.

"Do you know who sells him the drugs?"

"Been trying to find out for years," Bakura shrugs.

 

8.

Yugi and the rest of the class exercise their tolerance for chasing a ball through the mud in the rain while Kaiba exercises his Candy Crushing fingers on his phone under the shelter of the bleachers.

His gym excuse slip for today reads "I'm too rich for this" and is stapled to a twenty dollar bill.

Yugi did not have twenty dollars to spare and is stuck cleaning up the equipment, which is what Kaiba wrote on a separate piece of paper and stapled to another twenty dollar bill.

The loser squad loiters behind to help him, but a dollar to split between them says "alone" and, eventually, they stumble off inside because there is nothing they can do to help their friend and also it's pizza day at the cafeteria.

Yugi drags himself into the deserted locker room half an hour later, soaked and miserable. He's treading water in his shoes and his hair is flat, and Kaiba only knows he's the one he's _'going out'_ with by the murder in his eyes.

"Never,"  Kaiba throws over his shoulder as he's buttoning up his own shirt, "drug me again."

"Or what, more stuff to clean?"

"This is not an _'or what'_ type of demand," Kaiba clicks his consonances against the roof of his mouth and wonders if there is even a point.

Kaiba started this, Kaiba reflects, and Kaiba supposes Kaiba should get ready for war.

"You started it. We wasted three days because of you! I could've studied!" (HA!)

He also probably had to put his dick in a sock to make sure it didn't freeze off, but that's a technicality.

"If you wanted me to get lost," Yami continues, quieter, and flings his soaked gym blazer to the floor, "you could've just said that."

The blazer lands with a sharp crack. He's vicious, but he's hurt.

Kaiba has no patience for his sentiment, and that, he suspects, is the problem.

"And then we're making out in the washroom?" he adds again, more to himself. "Whatever, Kaiba."

"You should've thought of that before you asked me for a relationship."

"Should've never asked," he spits and loses his shirt.

Kaiba's seen Yugi's scrawny ass without a shirt on plenty of times before; they've had gym together since they've met. Since then, Yugi gained exactly one inch in height and didn't develop breasts or anything exceptionally attractive, so when Kaiba approaches him he's not thinking about bending him over a sink because he's not even that angry anymore.

He's thinking this is a corporate merger and it's Kaiba's turn to make concessions.

Yami is thinking he's about to get grabbed because his hands clench into fists and he's a ball of spikes and liquid fury, so Kaiba puts one hand up and says "do _not_ drug me," but what he really means is _'don't kick me in the balls.'_

And then he grabs him - and Yami lets himself get grabbed - and he's got the waist circumference of a melon and weighs about the same. Kaiba lifts him, lets his feet dangle for a  moment too long just to burn his indignant face into his memory, and plants him onto a bench.

Yami  is so indignant that his frown frowns, and Kaiba smirks because he's Kaiba.

But at least their eyes are level now, and Yami can tilt his chin regally with a bit more merit.

"I could send you somewhere warmer next time, if it saves you the hysterics."

It's not an apology. There will never be any apologies, and Yami needs to understand that.

"Is this you trying?" he demands after their staring contest produces no clear winner.

Kaiba doesn't answer, and Yami nods exactly once. His frown softens, and it's like he's congratulating Kaiba on a duel well fought.

It's irksome, but he realizes that there are some things he needs to understand about Yami, too, beyond dealing with a neat little tidbit that Yami is nothing but a product of Yugi's disturbed mind.

"So," Yami scuffs his foot on the bench. "Making out not in the washroom?"

That reminds him.

Kaiba pulls a handkerchief from his pocket with one hand, grabs Yami by the wrist with another and wipes cloth roughly over his smart mouth until his lips are red.

Yami is kind of into it.

"For a drug panel," Kaiba says when he's done putting his new evidence away. "I know it's LSD or mushrooms, and I'll prove it. Stop getting crappy ideas from Batman villains. "

"It's shadow magic, but whatever," Yami rolls his eyes. "So am I clean enough for you now, or...?"

Kaiba's face-skin is not going anywhere near Yami's poisoned face-skin. But his jaw is untainted and his neck should be fine, too, and that's were Kaiba's mouth lands.

Yami tastes like he's been chasing a ball in a thunderstorm. He tastes like a thunderstorm, and his skin feels too thin between Kaiba's teeth. He's so hot, too. He should be shivering and seeking warmth, but he's burning.

"Yeah," he says after he spends a minute deciding if this is acceptable or not, and Kaiba's fine with that because it gives him time to get used to the idea that he's feeling up Yami god-damn Motou. "Yeah, okay. Sure. It's cool."

He tilts his head out of the way and braces himself against Kaiba, except he doesn't really know what to grab so he clutches at two handfuls of shirt. His pulse is racing; Kaiba can feel it under his tongue, and there is an excited tremor between his collarbones by the time his lips reach the spot.

And then the only place left to go is up his throat.

Yami throws his head back.

It's difficult to remove his clutched little hands out of Kaiba's clothes.

It's harder for Kaiba to ease off him, and it sort of clicks that he likes this a little too much when his lips are still kissing vulnerable skin even though he means to stop.

It's nice, and he would like to do this again sometime.

Of course, it clicks in a very remote and detached way because what clicks is a _feeling_ and Kaiba isn't very interested in any of that nonsense. So instead, he catalogues that, one: this is weird; two: it's nice anyway; three: a bright future of playing cards literally forever is ahead of him.


End file.
